Movie Archives - Page 2 of 2

Legend of Crystania anime movie review

“Legend of Crystania” must be Japanese for “Boring anime movie I didn’t bother finishing” because I watched the first 55 minutes and then skipped to the ending. That says a lot, because the movie is only 77 minutes long including credits, and usually when I get that far in I just finish it. This time I just couldn’t see the point.

Apparently Legend of Crystania is a spin-off anime of the Record of Lodoss War anime series, so maybe if I’d watched that first I might have been a little more interested. My basic research tells me that the only carry-overs from main series to spin-off is the presence of two characters, Ashram and Pirotess, one of whom spends nearly the whole show brainwashed and crazy while the other has supposedly been nerfed into a helpless damsel in distress. It should have been possible to make a good movie regardless, but the writers probably just put a check mark next to their ‘cameo’ quota and carried on with their own crappy story.

Said story is about a boy named Re-something whose father is killed in a power struggle. Vengeful and enraged, Re-something runs for his life and ends up wandering into Crystania, the Land of the Gods, where the resident evil god offers him power. Of course that’s just a pretext for evil god taking over Re-something’s body, so the rest of his party has to try to talk him out of the deal while simultaneously fending off attacks from the locals and getting involved in a local struggle to resist the evil god.

It sounds interesting on paper, but the 30 seconds you just spent reading that paragraph have given you the exact same feeling you would have gotten from spending 77 minutes watching it: “Ah. I see.” And that’s about it. The art is blah, the animation is TERRIBLE, a.k.a. ‘QUALITY’ with very washed-out colors, maybe because the movie is rather old (yes, 1995 is old now). The English dub voices were rather meh, but more or less okay except for some annoying little girl’s voice. Nothing too remarkable about the music.

I think the writers just automatically expected fans to care because “Hey, it’s Lodoss!” so if you don’t know/care about the world of Lodoss then tough luck. I suppose it would be like complaining because you picked up a random Naruto/other anime movie even though you don’t know or like that show. I honestly didn’t know it was based on anything else when I started watching it at random, so I’ll just have to be more careful next time I’m picking something to watch.

The other flaw on top of “automatically expected to care” is that there were just way too many parties and factions mixing it up by the end. It’s not exactly hard to keep track of, just hard to figure it who, if anyone, to root for. The evil god is evil, certainly, but the good guys are just a bunch of shrill people running around screaming their heads off. Like, okay?

And Sherru/Pirotess is trying to free Ashram from the god’s control, but Ashram and the god made a deal fair and square. He got what he wanted, the god lived up to his end of the bargain, what’s the problem now? Why are you trying to back out now that you’ve got what you wanted? What, it wasn’t what you bargained for? Yeah well you should have thought of that before you got into it. Go file a lawsuit or something. Nope, sorry, can’t sympathize.

And after all that fussing and screaming, sure Sherru/Pirotess manages to free Ashram/exterminate the dark god, but from what I could tell the rest of the guys are left high and dry. Re-something in particular is still on the lam from the people who killed his father and he’s still stuck in Crystania without a way home. Apparently there’s a 3-OVA sequel called Legend of Crystania: The Chaos Ring which may or may not address the issue, but fool me once… I’m done here.

The Star of Cottonland anime movie review

Known in Japanese as Wata no Kunihoshi, The Star of Cottonland is an anime movie from 1984 that tells the story of a little anthropomorphized kitten who is taken in by a young man named Toshi. The kitten, Chibi-neko, is never drawn as a cat but as a loli catgirl, which apparently helped popularize catgirls in Japan. *shrug*

Anyway, it’s a cute but rather bland movie that follows Chibi-neko’s adventures as she first learns the differences between humans and cats (and which one she belongs to) and then goes on a day-long adventure through the city looking for the mystical land of Persia, which is supposed to be one huge litterbox as far as the eye can see. Sounds like a dream, eh?

Chibi-neko is cute, and she does learn a lot about the harshness of reality and how much life sucks for a cat on the run so it’s not an entirely vapid show. But still I only finished it like 2 days ago and it’s already blurred in my mind. It’s too slow-paced to keep children amused and too dull to interest adults. And the kitty is cute, but not THAT cute compared to some of the critters that have come after her. I imagine the manga might be a better read since it’ll be faster-paced, but I don’t feel any compunction to read it, so… yeah.

Worth a try if you like old anime movies the way I do, just don’t be disappointed when it turns out to be meh, ‘cos I warned you.

Hotarubi no Mori e anime movie review

Story: A young 6-year old named Hotaru gets lost in the enchanted woods near her grandpa’s house. She is saved by a boy named Gin, but Gin isn’t quite human. He’s under a curse that means he will disappear forever if a human ever touches him. Despite this, Hotaru and Gin form a fast friendship that blossoms into love over the years. The closer they get, the harder it becomes to resist touching each other…

I was rooting for them to find a way to work things out, but… Should I spoil the ending? Okay, but not in detail: Gin disappears in the end, but the two manage to have one quick hug before he goes. On one hand I was like Noooo! but on the other hand there were signs that Hotaru had cut herself off from the rest of her family and friends and was just living for summers where she could be with Gin, a relationship which had no future. So it was sad that they had to part, but in the end it was for the best. And at least Gin got to feel some human contact before he passed away for good.

The art was excellent, as it tends to be in anime movies. Since Hotarubi no Mori e is a slice-of-life romance there wasn’t much action to animate, but the drawing and backgrounds were all fantastic. Though lacking a bit in variety, but that’s pretty much the whole point: Hotaru living for only one part of the year and pining through the rest. I watched it raw so I can’t comment on fansub quality. Voice-acting was good. Gin sounded a bit flat, but again that was the point. It all worked out very well.

TBH it does kind of show that Hotarubi no Mori e was based on a manga oneshot. I suspected either that or a short story, because it’s a bit thin on content. It’s something that could have been told just as well in 10 minutes as in 45 with little loss of impact, but whatever, it was nice to watch, and though the end was bittersweet it was still for the best. I probably wouldn’t bother watching it again, but it was a nice, short watch.

Windaria anime movie review (spoilers)

Windaria is an old, old anime from 1986 that I’ve been meaning to watch for at least 10 years, ever since fansub group Live-Evil released their “set right what went wrong” version (apparently Windaria got a rather horrible official English dub/hackjob known as “Once Upon a Time”, courtesy of Harmony Gold). So I downloaded the fansub upon release, burned it to a CD (a CD!! that’s how long ago it was) and promptly forgot about it. Every couple of years I would stumble across it and mean to watch it then forget again, but today, at last, I finally got off my rump and watched the whole thing in one quick sitting.

Thoughts? Those Japanese don’t muck around with their unhappy endings! …and that’s all I’m going to say about the ending. TBH I saw the final denouement coming a few hundred miles away, but it was still a miserable thing to watch. Since I put spoilers in the title I’m going to spoil, but it’s a nice little movie, short, action-packed, good music, so maybe you stop now and go watch it yourself.

Windaria’s story has a war breaking out between two nations, Paro and Itha. [btw, official summaries say the war is over a supply of fresh water, but as far as I can recall this wasn’t mentioned in the anime itself. Maybe it’s from the book the anime was based on.]

A young villager named Izu who lives between the two countries decides, against his wife Marin’s advice, to throw his lot in with Paro in the upcoming war. Marin promises to wait for him to come back, but Izu – after betraying Itha and killing pretty much all the civilians in one act of subterfuge – forgets all about her and parties in Paro until circumstances drive him home with only the clothes on his back. Luckily for him Marin is still waiting for him… or rather her ghost is, only to depart after fulfilling her end of the promise. The movie ends with Izu bitterly regretting the greed and ambition that led him to betray everything he ever held dear, the end.

Most people will be familiar with the main themes of the show: war sucks for everyone, especially women + nothing good comes of allowing greed/a misguided sense of duty to force you to do what you know is wrong.

The two main male characters, Prince Jill and Izu, basically ruin things for everyone around them. Izu is a louse through and through, and it’s very annoying that he’s the only one to survive at the end (I kept hoping someone would pop up and shoot him), but Prince Jill squandered a very good chance to end the war and unite the two nations, and for that he definitely deserved to die.

The only one I felt sorry for was Marin, because her fate was pretty much sealed the moment Izu joined the dark side. She was killed when a bomb hit her house, but if she had joined the other villagers in evacuating into Itha, she would have been drowned when Izu flooded the place. Either way her life sucked. If Izu had stayed he probably would have been killed along with most of the other volunteer soldiers, but at least maybe the evacuees would have survived. Maybe. We’ll never know. Their best bet would have been to get as far away from either country as possible, but they were just simple village folk with few resources. *sigh*

If you like Infernal Affairs-type “Bad guy wins Pyrrhic victory” kind of anime, if you like movies about war or if you just want a rage-worthy tragedy, Windaria is right up your alley. Some people have called it a ‘tear-jerker’ but I was far too mad to even think about crying by the time it was over. I’m going to rage a little longer and get some shut-eye. G’night!

Infernal Affairs movie review

Quick Review
I watched this famous Hong Kong film starring Tony Leung and Andy Lau last weekend. Tony stars as Yan, a police mole deep within a triad gang. Andy stars as Lau, a gang mole high up in the police service. After a botched gang cocaine trade, both higher ups charge their moles with finding the identity of the other group’s mole. And so a deadly game of cat-and-mouse begins.

First, spoilers for the ending. Quick! Look away! Yan dies, Lau gets away with everything.

The acting is brilliant, the music is really good. Lights, action, cinematography, everything about Infernal Affairs is brilliant except one thing…the plot. The characters are really too stupid for words. What bothered me the most?

1. Lau managing to get all sorts of information to his triad boss during a stakeout, with the rest of the police force sitting right by him. Eventually it’s revealed that the guy right next with him was in the triad too, which is why he got away with it, but at the time it really pissed me off.
2. Yan picking up his phone after Inspector Wong died. The first thing he should have done was trash that thing and hope the number couldn’t be traced to him. Better hope he had a special phone only for Wong affairs.
3. Yan trusting Lau immediately and going along with him, all while knowing of the existence of a triad mole within the police. Dumbass.
4. Yan having solid evidence of Lau being the triad’s mole and choosing to blackmail him with it instead of turning it straight into the police. THIS DID NOT MAKE ANY SENSE AT ALL! Did he have a deathwish? I can only conclude he had a deathwish.
5. Yan confronting Lau face-to-face before making arrangements to have the evidence sent to the police. This allowed Lau to get clean away with everything once Yan has been killed by a bad cop. What An Idiot!

The ‘Lau Wins’ ending evidently went down pretty badly because eventually they trotted the same actors out for Infernal Affairs 3 (Infernal Affairs 2 apparently does not deserve to be mentioned) where Lau eventually pays for his sins. Yah, whatever. Infernal Affairs was really gripping, but now that it’s over I don’t think I want to watch it again. But I was impressed by both Andy and Tony, so I’ll be looking for more films by them in the future.